Home expert issues warning over item some people wash just twice a year

A home expert has warned that there's one thing in your house which you definitely don't wash enough.

You might reckon their advice is about something like your bedsheets, and while you should be running those through the wash on a regular basis, they had something else in mind.

This item is instead something from another part of the home which you probably use every single day but never think about.

Let's not keep you in suspense like you're a contestant on a talent show waiting to see whether you made it through to the next round.

Home expert Rikki Fothergill said that the thing you need to clean more is the bathroom mat, which you've probably got strategically placed in front of the bath or shower.

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While it's there to absorb all of your drippings as you step out of the shower and stop you slipping on what's likely to be a solid tiled floor, the bathroom mat is getting dirtier than you perhaps realise.

Fothergill said that too many households are cleaning their mat just twice a year - around a third to be more exact - when they are teeming with bacteria.

The reason for that is that it's often not fully dried out since it's on the floor, meaning it can trap bacteria and grow into a mass of unhygienic fluff.

Think about it, all that water over those weeks and months which never fully dries off while dirty feet step on it every morning.

Then of course, there's the other bits of mess that come from the bathroom such as the 'faecal fountain' which can erupt if you flush your loo without closing the lid.

Yes, it's safe to say your bathroom mat is probably not something you'd want to get too close to.

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As for how often you should be running your bath mat through the wash, Fothergill suggests you do it about once a week, which is probably far more often than you have been.

If you live alone or in a pretty sedate home, then you could likely get away with doing it once every two weeks instead, but the closer we get to winter the more likely that mould could build up in the waterlogged fabric.

In addition to cleaning the mat regularly, she also suggested that you add a liner to your bath mat since they can stop mildew from building up and are usually easier to clean than the bathroom mat itself.

And now you know how often you should clean a bathroom mat, we'll understand if after reading this you feel a powerful urge to stick the washing machine on.

Topics: Home, Health

Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

@MrJoeHarker